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More than 200 people were injured in a night of clashes in the Georgian capital, and half of them are still in the hospital, a top health official said on Friday.

Zaza Bokhua’s statement came soon after the nation’s president, Salome Zurabishvili, said that she was cutting short her trip to Belarus to return to the capital, Tbilisi, to deal with the crisis sparked by the appearance of a Russian lawmaker inside the Georgian parliament, AP reported.

Two hundred and forty people were injured after riot police fired rubber bullets and tear gas and unleashed water cannons on protesters outside Georgia’s parliament building. Giorgi Kordzakhiya, director of Tbilisi’s New Hospital, said two people lost eyes because of the rubber bullets.

The Georgian opposition has called for a new protest outside the parliament on Friday evening, Grigol Vashadze, who lost to Zurabishvili in the runoff, said on Rustavi 2 TV.

The unrest was sparked by the scheduled appearance of Russian lawmaker Sergei Gavrilov, a Communist Party member, at parliament as part of an assembly of legislators from Orthodox Christian countries.

The visit of the Russian delegation of the Orthodox assembly had prompted complaints before, but the anger turned into a street protest after Gavrilov sat in the chair of the Georgian parliament speaker during a session of the assembly.

Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze on Friday blamed opposition leaders for the violence.

Bakhtadze called the public outpouring “genuine” but said that the protest was hijacked by “the leaders of the destructive opposition who violated the law and the Constitution.”

Russian officials reacted to the protests with anger, blaming Georgian politicians trying to undermine the slow thaw in relations between the two countries.